Chapter Text
Jason is… mad, when he comes. It takes Dick by surprise, even though he had heard his angry tone not even an hour earlier. He guesses a part of him kind of thought Jason was kidding, that he’d take a look at the bruise blossoming across Dick’s face and crack one of those offensive jokes he’s so good at. Instead he arrives with groceries in hand and a fire in his eyes that has Dick hopping out of the way as he shoulders into the apartment.
Dick opens his mouth to speak but is interrupted by the thump of cans on his counter. Jason turns sharply after depositing them, eyes fixing on him intently. “You ready to make the best fuckin’ stew of your life?”
“Aw,” Dick grins. It makes his cheek ache. “Here I thought you were making it for me.”
Some of the fire dies from Jason’s expression, crumbling into something more amused. Whatever he was looking for in Dick, he must’ve found, because in the next moment he’s snorting good-naturedly and casting a sharp grin over his shoulder. “Not even a beating can get you out of this one, Goldie.”
“If only.” Dick says wryly. Joking with Jason is always nice. He’s old enough that Dick doesn’t feel bad about darker humor, feels fine to just crack jokes about his problems and leave them at that. Hell, if all Jason wanted to do today was make fun of their shitty lives and eat stew, that’d be a pretty damn good day.
Too bad Jason was a bit more stubborn than that.
“Speaking of that,” he says, while getting out various ingredients from bags, “You want me to tear B a new one? Because I will. I absolutely will.”
Dick hums and falls into step beside him, taking vegetables and putting them next to the cutting board. He… isn’t sure what he’d like Jason to do. He thinks he probably has to decide what he wants to do first, but he also thinks that he knows what he wants to do and knows even better than to do it. Dick might have been angry after B hit him, might’ve tried to harbor resentment, but he’s never been the kind of person that fuels from it. He’s not Bruce. The anger that made him feel fiery and irrational had long since cooled, and in its place there was… something like longing. A longing to make things right, to win back that reluctant approval that came hand in hand with being part of Bruce’s family. Dick could see it in technicolor: he’d apologize for losing his temper, for hitting B first, and Bruce would furrow his brow and half-accept the apology, and in a week or so he'd be welcome back at the Manor like nothing ever happened at all. (And he absolutely wouldn’t still feel like an outsider, like he wasn’t one argument away from being kicked out again, bruised and alone. Because forgive and forget, right?)
Sometimes it's like there's this insatiable need in his head to always make things right between them, and it bubbles to the surface as soon as things calm down. Because he can be frustrated at B, can be angry at how he dismisses him or starts fights- but at the end of the day he still thinks things would be better if he just sucked it up and apologized. Because it would be worth it. To be part of the family again, to be useful again.
(He still sees the anger in Jason’s eyes, still feels the product of Bruce’s anger on his skin, but. But in the face of feeling at home in the only place he's ever called it, in the face of being able to see Tim and Damian and his sisters on a regular basis- God, he knows it's unhealthy, but- he'd do anything for them.)
And if apologizing for such a minor, run-of-the-mill argument was it? Then that's a very small price to pay.
(Then his mind catches up to his heart and tells him no nonono- you shouldn't have to put up with that to be loved, shouldn't have to find out how fists feel on your skin in order to get an ounce of affection later-)
“Dick.” Jason waves a knife in front of his face, and his thoughts snap into place with startling clarity. The knife gleams under the gritty lighting of his apartment, and he sniffs and takes it from him. They both pretend not to notice his shaking hands.
“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you.” Jason says. It’s not a question, or if it is, they both know the answer.
“I'm just... it's a lot, sometimes.” Dick admits, "To try and understand. To try and do the right thing." He tries to line up the knife with the onion he’s cutting, but his hand is shaking too much, and Jason takes it from him easily and sends him off to open cans instead.
“What’s… confusing you, then?” Jason dices them quickly and Dick watches, mind a million miles away.
“Bruce, I guess. I mean. He knows I love him, even though I- even though we fight a lot. So I don’t understand why he’s always pushing me away.” Dick starts, and it sounds okay to his own ears, so with a glance from Jason he tentatively keeps going.
“And Bruce… he wasn’t always like that, either. He never hurt me when I was a kid, then I got to be a teenager and things changed. But. But I still understand him the most, probably, and I got to know him before he isolated himself so much. I understand him, Jason, and I love him. He’s like my dad, even if he doesn’t want to be. So I don’t understand why that’s not- why it’s not enough. ” Dick’s voice breaks embarrassingly as he talks, and Jason pulls him into a hug right in the same moment that tears begin to fall.
“It’s not enough, and it’s never enough, and I- I just want him to-”
Love me, Dick thinks. He won’t say it aloud, because he doesn’t think his heart could take anymore emptying, but the thought is so loud and concise in his mind that he’s sure Jason could hear it anyway. He just wants Bruce to love him.
(Because he’s seen the way B looks at Tim, the way he sends him off to bed when he works too hard, and how his face lights up when he manages to pull him into a case. And he’s seen how much pride the man sets aside to try to bridge the gap between him and Jason, even going so far as to apologize and tell Jason everything he wants- needs- to hear. He’s seen him pick up a hundred parenting books for Damian, and make efforts to go to his art shows once Dick reminds him and--)
And Dick sees these things in Bruce, sees all these good qualities and how deep his love for his family runs and yet still--
It’s not enough.
Bruce forgets Dick’s birthday half the time. He over works him on cases and hits him- sometimes, it’s only sometimes, his chest screams- over mission reports. Dick once, when he was a teenager and was trying hard to be better, managed to clear Bruce’s work schedule for an entire day. He planned out the whole thing and even was planning on going to an antique watch shop with the man, only to have Bruce sleep in and then take a 'work call' halfway through the movie they’d been dying to watch together. No one’s perfect, but there are still so many of these little moments lined up in Dick’s mind that he knows B can’t possibly love him like he loves them. He knows.
Somehow it doesn’t stop him from wanting to try.
“It’s gonna be okay, Goldie.” Jason’s humming soft assurances into his hair, strong arms wrapped around him and rubbing comfortingly. “You don’t fucking deserve that.”
He squeezes his eyes shut and another sob racks his chest.
“You really, really don’t.” Jason murmurs, and he sounds so sure in that moment that Dick wants to believe him.
“I just want to apologize.” Dick admits softly. His brother's chest is broad and warm, and Jason grips tighter at the admission. “I’m so tired, Jason, and I just.”
“It’s alright. I got you.”
“I just want him to not hurt me,” Dick sobs. It’s the closest he’ll ever admit to wanting Bruce’s love (the difference between being loved and not being hurt has always been so insignificant), and saying it makes something deep inside him absolutely break in two.
He wants Bruce to love him, but if he could settle for not being hurt, he thinks he might selfishly take that one too. And judging by the tightening grip around him, and the heartbreaking ‘Oh, Dick’ breathed in his ear, Jason understood. He wishes so dearly that wasn’t the case, but it was, and so Dick hugged just as tight back and hoped that maybe this piece of his heart could help Jason feel more whole too.
They held each other until Dick’s cries tapered off, breaking apart with both of them worn out and misty-eyed. Dick cast a forlorn glance towards the soup before Jason herded him off to the couch with a slight reprimand, until the last thing he remembers is dried tear tracks on his face and Jason’s tender smile from the kitchen.
---
Dick wasn’t lying when he said things hadn’t always been bad between him and Bruce.
When Dick was eight years old, fresh out of juvie with the memory of his parents' broken bodies flashing behind his eyes, Bruce had taken him to the Manor and called it his home. Dick hadn’t believed him at the time, had been too caught up deciding if he was like the rest of the adults who had said they would take care of him then died or put him in a jail cell. So it made sense, really, why he didn’t believe him at all until one night in particular.
Dick had woken up screaming. Not yelling, not gasping, screaming. Visions of his parents falling were overtaking his vision, of him falling with them, of their mauled and bloody bodies crunching and cracking bones to tower over him and tell him it was his fault. They repeated the same things the boys in juvie said to him, did the same things done to him, and the crowd all around them was sobbing and cheering and then shoving him to his knees and-
And Dick woke up screaming. Tears were streaming down his face, and he wanted to call out for his Daj, or Dat, but his brain replayed the images from his dream and he whimpered instead. When Bruce burst into the room and turned on the light, he’d flinched so hard another sob tore from his throat, but after a few moments of not being hurt he’d looked up to see the man being violently torn between hugging him and keeping his distance.
The awkward look on his usually stoic face had made Dick come to the teary conclusion he was constipated, but after a minute of uncomfortable eye contact the man surprised him and took two strides forwards to wrap him in a hug. He was huge, so much bigger than Dick had been, and the feeling of being touched without pain had been so foreign at the time that his tears stopped nearly instantly.
“It’s okay, Dick,” Bruce had said, voice deep and rumbling next to his head. “You’re safe now.”
So Dick had held on tighter and, foolishly, believed him.
The next day when he went to apologize for waking Bruce up, he’d instead been taken aside and told he had no reason to say sorry. Bruce promised that he would always, always be here for him, especially in the middle of the night after a nightmare. That Dick was safe here for as long as he wanted to stay, and that the Manor would always be his home, should he want it. Dick had beamed up at Bruce, and gotten a small, hesitant smile in return, and they spent the rest of the day playing catch outside together and watching movies. Like everything in the world had been made right, just like that.
Sometimes, when he’s alone and it’s the middle of the night after a particularly bad nightmare, he wonders just where he went wrong. Bruce made so many promises when he was a kid, and nearly none of them he kept. Had Dick just been easier to love, back then?
Or was Bruce lying all along?
---
When Dick comes to, there’s a warm weight on top of him that he doesn’t recognize. His vigilante senses wake up before he does, and he nearly flings it off of him in panic before he realizes who it is. Scrawny arms wrapped around him, a mop of dark hair. Overall espresso aroma.
Tim huffs, still half asleep, from on top of him and Dick smiles to himself, pleasantly surprised. He runs his hand through the thick hair gently, content for the small moment of peace before he officially gets up and has to deal with what a shit show his life has been the past few days. It takes a minute before he realizes there are other people in the room too. His family.
“Why couldn’t you have made waffles? I asked for waffles-”
“You want waffles, then go buy some fuckin’ Eggos, Blondie-”
“But I thought you were, like the chef of the family! Our own Betty Crocker.” Steph’s voice sounds from the kitchen. She’s probably supposed to be whispering, but she’s yelling. (She’s always been the worst at covert operations, due to her refusal to acknowledge inside and outside voices).
“Batty Crocker.” Duke pipes up, sitting on the counter. He has whip cream on the top of his lip, curled into a smile. Steph high fives him for the joke and Jason growls.
“Don’t be an imbecile. Alfred is obviously the chef of the family.” Damian sniffs. He’s sitting at the table with some toast in hand, purposefully ignorant of how his hungry munching contradicts his previous sentiment. Dick feels his heart fill with warmth as he sleepily listens to their conversation.
“Shut it, munchkin. Did you all seriously come here just to complain about my cooking, because that’s fucking-”
“Language.” Cass says softly. Jason swats at her with the spatula he’s flipping pancakes with before thinking better of it.
“-Dumb,” Jason finishes. “That’s dumb. And annoying.”
“What are siblings for?” Stephanie says sweetly. Jason grumbles something about needing a vacation before Damian looks over and spots him awake.
“Grayson!” he exclaims, eyes lighting up slightly. He schools his expression instantly, and Dick beckons him over before his heart can break at the sight. As soon as the kid’s in reach, he pulls him into a hug, partly squishing Tim and releasing a squawk of indignation from him.
“Grayson,” Damian grumbles, stiffly. “I advise you to let go.”
“I missed you,” Dick says, because he has. He’s missed all of them, hasn’t been in contact since that night Bruce and him fought in front of everyone. He’s… surprised. That they came. That they still want to be around him.
“Tt. The Cave has been boring with no competent sparring partners.” Damian says, and it’s the best he’s going to get. Dick presses a kiss to his forehead before letting go, grinning wider at the embarrassed flush on the kid’s face. His face hurts from smiling so much, but it’s worth it. They’re worth it.
Tim is waking up, slow as ever, pushing himself to his elbows. Dick wraps him up in a hug too, wanting to preserve some of the peace on his little brother’s face before he wakes up and the weight of the world is on his shoulders again. Tim might be the best compartmentalizer, but the amount of responsibilities he has as part-time CEO and vigilante tend to compensate for that. Dick’s glad at least his sleep is restful.
“Dick,” Tim slurs. “You’re… I’m… how did I get here-”
“We kidnapped you.” Steph chirps, mouth full of pancakes. Tim sends her a confused look and she moves on. “Nice to see you, Dick! It’s been a while.”
It has been a while. Steph and Cass were in Hong Kong for a mission, and Duke has been too busy with school to go on patrol, so this is the first time he’s seen them in weeks. He hopes he doesn’t look like too much of a mess.
“It has. Too long.” He grins at her, and she returns the sentiment.
“You want some pancakes? These hooligans demanded food.” Jason calls out. There’s a plate of pancakes on the counter next to him that’s emptying out just as fast as it’s piling up. Dick watches in amusement as Duke grabs one as soon as Jason sets it down. He turns and smacks him this time, with no restraint.
“Sounding more like an old man everyday, Jason.” Tim cracks a grin. Jason whips around to defend himself, but then Tim mouths the word hooligan and he narrows his eyes.
“Shut up and eat your breakfast.” Jason mutters, dropping off a plate for them on the couch. He’s wearing an apron, the one Donna got for Dick last Christmas that says Come put my hot meat in your mouth , and the bright pink fabric wrapped around his waist does give him an odd, motherly vibe. Dick grins at Tim and pulls the plate into their lap, thanking Jason as he does so.
He couldn’t think of a more perfect way to wake up. Around him, Stephanie and Duke are roping Damian into catching whipped cream in his mouth, and Cass is helping Jason with dishes (with some added commentary), and Tim’s beside him filling his stomach with homemade pancakes, and--
And it’s good. It’s really, really good. Dick doesn’t experience a lot of moments like these, and between seven different intricate lives, it can be hard to find down time to spend with each other. He’s happy, and painfully relieved that he still has it in him to smile, and painfully grateful that they’re here right now. He needs them.
Tim asks what time it is absent-mindedly, and Dick leans over to grab his phone, easily compensating. He turns it on and opens his mouth to read it off when the first notification catches his gaze.
“What is it?” Tim asks, attention zeroing in on his open-mouthed expression. Dick swallows harshly and sets it face down on the coffee table.
“It’s from Bruce,” he sighs, tentative happiness sucked out of him. “He wants to talk.”